Dare I dare to be me? It feels quite audacious to even think it. Who am I? Who’s me? When you’re a domestic abuse survivor (and, yes, I do like the word survivor, because that was some tough kind of love I went through but I came through it and I think I’ve earned the right to use a positive label around myself), you’ve lost yourself so horribly, so terribly, you feel you’re not you. When the abuse included emotional abuse, when the abuser crawled inside your head, rubbing shit all over its walls, then you’re so stressed, so full of mental trauma, that it’s actually quite difficult – between reliving particularly horrid episodes and battling to forget – to remember who you were and forge a path back to that you. All the breadcrumbs were eaten years ago. By quite sinister predatory crows going by the names of Shame, Humiliation and the tough one, Mental Torture. It’s difficult to know when – how – to regroup when you’ve endured this. So the question becomes not ‘what am I going to do now (now you’ve escaped)’ but ‘where am I going to find myself again to be able to move on and then do something’? The ‘something’ kinda takes second place to the need to rediscover yourself and find firm footing, confidence-wise, to be able to feel able to move onwards. You take baby steps, baby baby steps, a new nail polish colour, little trips out on your own to give yourself a boost, new combinations of clothes you love, a slight sashay in your walk as you realise, once again, how much you love life. Then you start to think bigger. Bigger. Brighter. En grande. What’s the most audacious thing you could do? How would you feel if you did it? [All the while simply daydreaming it]. Your daydreams give you wings. You expand your reach. Dare that little bit bigger. You realise that, yes, of course you can dare to dare to be you. Because, wtf, you is all you have. You have to live you to the fullest. It’s pretty much an obligation. Ain’t no-one else gonna do it for you, babe, and you know you’re not one of those people who dies knowing they had things left un-done. If that thought doesn’t scare the bejeez out of you, then nothing else will. Get dreaming. Get dare-ing. Get daring. Damn right you’re going to dare to dare to be you. You owe it to yourself. And you’ve got a whole lot of wasted time to make up for.
[This was my response for today’s prompt for the 31 days of moving on challenge (‘dare’), which coincided, today, with Five Minute Friday. I spent 7 minutes (not 5) writing]